A Winter Soldier Speaks

A Winter Soldier Speaks

Camilo Mejia, speaking just now at TBA. (Quickly transcribed as he was speaking, so it may be imperfect):

When you go half way around the world to brutalize a country, the pain does not stay in Iraq. It's an atrocity-producing situation...It is not inherent in human nature to kill, so you have to dehumanize the enemy. You don't kill Ahmed father of two, taxi driver who likes soccer. So you call him hajji, you call him raghead. You have all these names that are part of this strategy to turn human beings into killing machines. The problem with that approach is, number one, the cost to the people of Iraq. But also the dehumanization cannot be turned off when we get home. In order to survive the mission we dehumanize the enemy. When we came home and try to reconcile the person who did those things on the war front with the person here trying to be a brother, a friend or father. It is almost impossible to do that, because we are not the same person anymore. We are finding the necessity to rebuild ourselves.

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March 17, 2008

Camilo Mejia, speaking just now at TBA. (Quickly transcribed as he was speaking, so it may be imperfect):

When you go half way around the world to brutalize a country, the pain does not stay in Iraq. It’s an atrocity-producing situation…It is not inherent in human nature to kill, so you have to dehumanize the enemy. You don’t kill Ahmed father of two, taxi driver who likes soccer. So you call him hajji, you call him raghead. You have all these names that are part of this strategy to turn human beings into killing machines. The problem with that approach is, number one, the cost to the people of Iraq. But also the dehumanization cannot be turned off when we get home. In order to survive the mission we dehumanize the enemy. When we came home and try to reconcile the person who did those things on the war front with the person here trying to be a brother, a friend or father. It is almost impossible to do that, because we are not the same person anymore. We are finding the necessity to rebuild ourselves.